Book Review

For the past three weeks or so, I – along with my class – have struggled reading How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez. The book is structured into several vignettes, all in reverse chronological order, which made it horrifically complicated to understand. Alvarez's style of writing, according to my research, is intentionally a fictionalized version of her real life. Alvarez successfully includes various themes – such as sexuality, independence – and non-fictional ideas – such as the dictatorship in the Dominican Republic and cultural and societal differences in America – which all builds onto a really good book.

Myself and the entire class had struggles understanding the structure of the book. To my understanding, the Aristotelian theory of a well-knit plot is that it has an underlying structure that promises the reader that the author is in control, and any event an author is telling will eventually make sense. Alvarez however, takes on her own method by telling her story with fifteen vignettes, all in reverse chronological order, which obviously is not a “well-knit plot”.

Imagine trying to make sense of how one event has an affect on another event, because the first event mentioned is actually the result of the event that happened first, but the first event is not mentioned until after you found out about the result. Did that just confuse you? It confused me. Depending on the reader, and on the content, this can be a creative way to write and tell a story. This is essentially Alvarez's structural technique. I had trouble understanding it, but in the end was appreciative of it.

Alvarez's background history plays a major part in all of the books she has written. She was born in the United States, but grew up in the Dominican Republic because her parents favored a dictatorship over the life in America. When her father got involved with trouble however, their family was forced to flee the Dominican republic and head back to the US, to New York.

Her english was moderate, but she did not know enough to be able to communicate in school or with others who only spoke it. The most she picked up from others was that they were not very open-armed to new students, especially to someone who could not speak their language. Her mother encouraged her to believe that the hate remarks she received from other children, were actually statements for her to embrace. This later encouraged Alvarez to begin writing. Throughout high school she wrote stories, took creative writing classes, and didn't let the thought of never becoming a writer discourage her. Not knowing the language forced her to pay close attention the each and every word, resulting in being a great writer.

The “plot” of Julia Alvarez's life is very similar to the stories she writes. In this book, the main characters travel back and forth from the Dominican Republic to America because of the terrible dictatorship. When in America, each member of the family has difficulty adjusting to the language and the change of lifestyle. When traveling back to the Dominican Republic however, some characters find it hard to disregard American culture. Alvarez's style of writing is basically reflected off her childhood and teenage/adult life to the present day.

Although Alvarez uses her personal life as the baseline of the story, there are several underlying themes she brings up – such as independence, sexuality, and culture/society differences. For example, in the first vignette, Antojos, the readers meet Yolanda, one of the four sisters in the book. Yolanda returned to the Dominican Republic from America possibly to stay on a permanent basis. Over the time she had been gone, Yolanda forgot much of her native language, making it difficult to communicate with her family. She stuck out physically from the rest of her family because she dressed informally and wore her hair long and natural, whereas her cousins wore designer pantsuits and colored their hair. She didn't fit in linguistically because she forgot much of her Spanish and could not express herself well. She also had a dramatically different perspective on class than the rest of her family. For some reason I believe Yolanda went back to the Dominican Republic to find out who she really is, because if she was happy in America she would have stayed. This is somewhat opposite of Alvarez's story, but she uses the contrast to bring out the idea of the culture change between life in the DR and life in America.

In the second vignette of the book, The Kiss, Sophia – another sister – had an ongoing conflict with her father for a struggle over control of her sexuality. For a long period of time, Carlos (Sophia's father) forbade her from spending the night with her boyfriend. To enjoy any intimacy, Sophia had to go on vacation. Her desire for sexual relations frustrated her to the point where when her father denied them from her, she ran away. For so long she was denied sexual freedom, and it broke the relationship between her and her father. She believed it was her right to explore her sexuality however she pleased while also enjoying the privacy and independence of adulthood, while her father believed that the presence of a 'loose' woman in his house disrespects his parental and male authority. Nowhere did I find information on Alvarez's sex life, but as you can see she once again portrays a theme of both independence and sexuality in this book.

I could go on forever analyzing every vignette in the story, but my main idea is that although the structure of How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents was grueling, the content and writing style was outstanding.